Fires

Share your information, hints and discuss Laser cutters/engravers

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adafruit
 
Posts: 12151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:21 pm

Re: Fires

Post by adafruit »

westfw wrote:@ladyada: watching it keeps it from catching on fire? :-)
umm, yes. you watch it and the moment you see it start to flare you open it and put out the fire
if you aren't there watching it, the entire thing can catch on fire within 30 seconds

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westfw
 
Posts: 2005
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:01 pm

Re: Fires

Post by westfw »

They're showing up all over in community "maker spaces", and even schools. Maybe one will be near you soon! ($100/month membership is a lot more palatable than $20,000 or so. Of course, you'd have to share...)

jbrandt01
 
Posts: 17
Joined: Sat Nov 22, 2008 4:39 am

Re: Fires

Post by jbrandt01 »

If all you want to cut is paper, you can spend waaaaaaay less than $20k and make one yourself.

My setup is made from a BANNED DPSS in a cheap axiz housing (clamped into a big aluminum block) that stays stationary and the table is a cross-slide vise (X,Y) from harbor freight that has the handles replaced with hobby servos that have had the pots removed and replaced with linear ones. Its driven by an arduino using the regular servo libs. Another pin flips a SSR which turns the laser on and off for blanking. Sadly I have yet to get around to writing actual useful software. The only things I've actually engraved were done by just figuring out how many 'degrees' of rotation in what order to make some pretty basic patterns. Interfacing it with processing is my next goal.

Lasers are freakin' cool, I'm really disappointed that my argon-ion is on its way out. I can't really afford to get it recharged so I think I am going to have to unload it and my PCAOM. Thankfully diode lasers are dropping in price and increasing in quality very rapidly.

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